Eagles Bracing For Intense Off-Season Workouts From Chip Kelly

This may indeed be a holiday weekend, but come Monday for the Philadelphia Eagles and their new regime, the holiday and days of laziness will be over.

Chip Kelly employs a high intense uptempo scheme on both sides of the ball, and Eagles 24/7 is reporting that both sides of the ball, in particular the offensive players, are bracing themselves for some of the most intense, grueling workouts they’ve ever experienced.

“The weight conditioning is a little bit more up-tempo than it was under [previous strength and conditioning coach] Barry Rubin,” said center Jason Kelce during Thursday’s fund-raiser for the Herremans Foundation. “I think that part of the reason why is because we’re going to run up-tempo. Instead of being able to relax and just kind of walk around the weight room and do your lifts, it’s more at a steady pace where you have a set amount of time rest period. I think the receivers and those guys might be doing a little bit more conditioning. They know they’re in for a lot of running in this offense.”

Kelly has been reluctant to go into detail and specifics about his program, but with the introduction of new Sports Science Coordinator Shaun Huls, the Eagles expect to be pushed to levels they’ve never seen before.

“It’s going to be very intense, is what I’m expecting,” said offensive lineman Todd Herremans. “But I think that April 2nd, we’re going to start our training sessions, and that is going to be simulating what we’re going to be doing in practice and in the games. It’s going to be pretty intense. Constantly going, you’re going through one drill, and then you’re going to jog to the next one, and then you do that, and then you jog to the next one. So you’re constantly moving, and he’s basically probably going to get us in the best shape of our life.

Asked what he’s doing to prepare for the new pace, tight end Brent Celek said, “Just run as much as you can. Just try to stay in shape from when the season ended. That way, it’s easier. I think that no matter what, when we go out there for that first practice, we’re all going to be hurting because the new tempo is probably going to be getting all of us. You’re going to learn on the run. No matter how hard you try to train for it, I don’t think you can probably train for his tempo.”

One thing you can expect from this new group of Eagles is that they’ll on be in shape.